In my 27 years of gaming I have learnt 3 valuable life lessons. Number one: Difficulty increases the further you progress. Which considering my first computer in life was an Amiga 500+ you might actually find that hard to believe. From games like Lemmings, Zool, Rocket Ranger, Moonstone, and Monkey Island….wasn’t exactly thrown into the shallow end of my local swimming pool, more like thrown into the shallow ocean head first. But before giving up and drowning I managed to find my feet, stay composed & attack this vast ocean head on.

To this day I don’t regret that decision. Where difficulty may well increase, the rewards at the end of it is worth all the pain, anger, broken controllers & suffering that a great computer game can give you. There is no feeling quite like it.

That moves me on to Number two: I never lose, I either win or learn. I first came to the realisation of this in the late 90’s, early 00’s. My one and only console run which consisted of PlayStation 1, 2 and Xbox 360. Properly one of my most frustrating times gaming. Oh and yes, puberty had a major helping hand in this. I firstly had to go from Joystick to controller, a concept I was not too thrilled with. But like the first valuable lesson (Difficulty increases the further you progress) I adapted. Games like Resident Evil 2, Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, GTA Vice City, Halo 3, these games that are all different genres, could generate the same result. I was utter pants, decision making awful, timing laughable. Made me doubted my abilities as a gamer once again. But then you come to the end of the journey in a computer game. If you’re reading this, think back through any game you’ve ever played and you’ll realise. You never truly lose; you only learn and eventually win. Even a funny, adventure adult game like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude can teach you that life lesson. This was where I truly matured as a gamer and in life in general.

I was built for PC gaming. I think that early Amiga run truly moulded me into the gamer I am today. My first PC gaming experience was properly around 1995. Doom (1993) was my first true taste of a PC game. Yes, I had a stint on consoles. But just like that lover who you can’t stop thinking about, the PC gamer in me never truly went away. Early games like Carmageddon, Civilization II, The Curse of Monkey Island & especially the Championship Manger series paved the way. These were the games that tort me my final valuable life lesson. Number three: Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window. They’re many ways to interrupt this saying. But the way I see it, if what I do during my gaming experience doesn’t solve a problem with minimal effort (E.g. Signing players on Championship Manager or attacking Ghandi on Civilization IV), I can always bin it off and start again.

This can certainly be used in today’s digital download era. Quite easy to buy a game, play it and send it back nowadays. WWE2K series, early access games like Dead by Daylight, big hits like Fallout 4 and even applications on PC’s & mobile devices. Any if not all can suffer the same fate. But even my favourite games today like ARK Survival Evolved, Civilization VI, Battlefield 1 and GTA V can all use this same logic. This one saying alone has tort me to sit back, relax and enjoy these new experiences.

I’m nearly 32 years old and I went from learning to swim in the shallow ocean to swimming in shark infested waters. It’ll never be easy and can only get harder. But know matter what happens, I can always Alt F Core…